1951 Year In Review

The very first Holden ute was released in January 1951.

Jean Lee's police mug shots. At a young 31 years of age, Lee would be the last woman executed in Australia.

By 1951 the Australian buying public had not noticed the new Holden lacked much of the refinement of contemporary American and British rivals. In fact, the original 48/215 carried over much of the wartime austerity associated with cars manufactured during the 1940's, and not many Australian's cared that the All-Australian was in reality based on a pre-war Chevrolet design concept!

Sales of the 48/215 far outstripped supply, and Holden were forced to publish a booklet of testimonials entitled "Holden Owners Give Reasons Why Holden is Worth Waiting For". They knew this strategy would only buy them so much time, so much effort was put into lifting production rates from (the 1948 initial) 10 units per day to 100 per day.

Expansion was inevitable, and so the company purchased 60 hectares of land in Dandenong, Victoria for future development. As total production of the 48/215 passed the 50,000 mark, Holden were to release their very first Ute, officially named the 50-2106.

Interestingly, the use of the acronym "48/215" was understandably not particularly popular with the public, who choose to simply call the car a "Holden".

Later cars would be dubbed the FJ, FE, FC and so on, and so many simply assumed that the first Holden must have been an "F" something. The title "FX" is widely attributed to used-car dealers, needing to identify this model from the later models, the "X" simply stood for "Unknown".